Rating: 
Summary: Guessing with struts
Review: I'm totally surprised at the good reviews this book has been given. I purchased it based on those reviews and now ... well. The book is wordy and lacks some basic get you started information you would expect from a book with a title containing the words "kick start." The authors got it part right - it should read, "Start kicking." The authors seem to be upholding a long-standing java tradition: make it complex and avoid fundamental procedural steps. For what its worth, when I'm learning something new - upfront - I need to take baby steps - confidence builds and learning is accelerated on and up. Chapter 3 dives directly into a "hello world" application without one single word in the entire book devoted to "Here is what you need to follow along boys and girls..." Not one line of "before we begin, do this and do that." So if your looking for a good text on "guessing with struts" look no more. I give it two stars because there must be some value somewhere in these pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Not too shabby.....
Review: Kevin and James have done an excellent job breaking Struts down into manageable pieces with clear, detailed examples. Often books pump you with information with no real world examples, not only are they dull, but they're often confusing. Struts Kick Start has a great mix to keep the reader on his/her toes. There's usually a thick fog clouding the path to the true power of new languages and standards, Struts Kick Start helps to lift that fog in a timely manner! I'd be lost without it, definitely worth the [$$].
Rating: 
Summary: Useful, but not an easy read
Review: Parts of the book are really well-written, illustrating a concept by showing how it is implemented in a sample application. However, this approach isn't consistently applied, particularly in the sections related to the tag libraries. In many cases the descriptions don't relate at all to the code, leaving the reader to guess why certain parameters were used, or how a particular tag relates to its associated bean or resource file. A few more diagrams might be useful as well. After slogging through the sample code and its associated descriptive text, I was able to learn quite a bit about the Struts framework. But it was much more difficult than it had to be, especially for a newcomer to Struts such as myself. The very nature of the Model-View-Controller paradigm that Struts is built on requires a separation of code related to presentation from that related to business logic or data access. I found myself building little maps for myself as I read the book, trying to keep track of where (and when) a bean was created or maintained, since without a clear understanding of the framework there's no easy way to trace the life of an object. I think the book would have been much better if the authors had invested the time to create some of these maps for us. Paradoxically, the very shortness of the book forces you to spend MORE time than would be necessary if the discussions were more complete. This book is not an easy read, but I found it useful nevertheless. Be prepared to invest a lot of energy in hacking your way through the code, and don't be shy about writing notes in the book if you really want to understand what's going on. The authors have thoughtfully included an electronic version of the book on the CD, allowing you to search for key words to find what you need. And I liked the overall approach of using a sample application to bring the framework to life.
Rating:
Summary: Struts at it's clearest
Review: Struts Kick Start is a very complete and clear presentation of the de facto j2ee/jsp/model 2 standard. Great collection of complete working examples. Best reference out there.
Rating:
Summary: Struts at it's clearest
Review: Struts Kick Start is a very complete and clear presentation of the de facto j2ee/jsp/model 2 standard. Great collection of complete working examples. Best reference out there.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughts from a Struts Programmer
Review: Struts Kick Start I started learning how to use the Struts framework in late in 2001, after I became fed-up with hacking web applications together with the digital equivalent of "Duct-tape Engineering". At that time there were no books available for the budding Struts developer, "Read The Fine Manual" was not an option ... you read the website, you read the code or you asked questions on the mailing list. This situation finally changed this fall with the release of a flurry of titles dedicated to Struts. I present here my thoughts on one of the latest: "Struts Kick Start". What is Struts? Struts is a framework for developing web applications. It is a distilation of the current set of known best practices into a working code set that can be extended to meet almost any web application requirements. It part of the Jakarta Project at the Apache Software Foundation. What do I know about Struts? I have been developing web applications, using Java, for four years and using struts for over a year, and am a regular participant on the Struts mailing list. I was also a technical reviewer for one of the other Struts Books released this fall and was recently invited to speak at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire on the use of Struts. What's good about this book? There are many excellent things that I could point to. I particularly like the obvious depth of research that accompanies this book. There is a very interesting history of the development of the MVC design pattern and they even name the inventor. Do you know who invented MVC? If you want to know, buy the book! The chapters cover everything that you will need to know, in the order you are most likely to need to know it. There's even a chapter explaining the "struts-config.xml" file's DTD! (You may want to skip that on the first few readings :-) There is good coverage of the Struts taglibs. I see a lot of questions about these on the mailing lists, so this information is very timely and it looks very well explained. I like the coverage of other open source tools that work well with Struts. This is an important point because Struts does not do everything for you (by design), so there will be areas that will benefit from other tools. I'm looking forward to trying out some of their recommendations and easing my own Struts development lifecycles. What's not so good? Just one niggle, and it's more of a programming style issue, but in their example code they have references to their business objects. They explain that it is important to separate out business logic from action logic, which it is, but then proceed to use their business object within the action. Now, I realise that example code is not the same thing as robust, production-ready code, but when people are first learning a language or framework, they tend to copy exactly what they see in the book they are learning from. Even though example code should be light on error checking (for reasons of readabilty), it should be heavy on correctness and good style. Should you rush out and buy it? If you are about to use Struts on a project, are new to Struts and need dead tree documentation for those RTFM moments or are evaluating Struts for future projects, then you absolutely need this book. If you are an intermediate Struts user, then this book would still be very useful to you and I can certainly recommend it. If you are an experienced Struts user, then you've almost certainly exchanged emails with James or Kevin, on the Struts mailing list, so you can make your own mind up!
Rating:
Summary: Good start to realize Struts apps J2EE and Web Services
Review: Thanks for a book having a very practical approach to integrate Struts in web applications running in EAI environments ! The examples described are - especially when combined with the attached cohesive set of apps - a very good starting point to get apps running in the environment Java/Struts/J2EE (and even Web Services using Axis...). Dirk V. Schesmer
XML Web Services Solutions
Stuttgart/Germany
Rating:
Summary: Kick Start and That's All (not for architects)
Review: The book delivers exactly what its title promises - a kick start. The term "kick start" does not imply going from 0-60 in 6 seconds. There is virtually no in-depth coverage of advanced features, such as beanutils or scaffolding, but those fall outside the scope of the book. There is much coverage of basics such as the HTTP protocol, session management, and MVC. More advanced readers should probably opt for [...]the more obscure and advanced knowledge.
Rating: 
Summary: Another incomplete book written by MEN!!!
Review: The responsibility of a software engineer is to look at the problem from all possible angles/views. The author assumes ALL users know how to set things up and run a web application. The title is "STRUTS kick start", it makes sense that it should include readers who has no prior web set up experience. This book teaches you all the knowledge about STRUTS, but fails to show you how to set up and run the examples. If readers can't run the examples and practice, no matter how good the content of the book is, it is useless. Only men miss little-big detail like this!
Rating:
Summary: A good choice if you have the right background knowledge
Review: The Struts framework is becoming a de-facto standard for developing interactive web applications using servlets. If this type of development is something you are responsible for, you should consider getting a copy of this book to help you take the next step in your professional development. The "kickstart" concept means that the authors don't spend a lot of time on fluff or auxilllary material. You are quickly exposed to the core concepts along with a large number of examples to illustrate those technical points. There are a number of assumptions made in this book. The web server used for examples is the Jakarta Tomcat server. If you're using that platform for your development, you'll be very comfortable with the book. The authors also assume a prerequisite knowledge of JSP, as well as the use of MySQL for writing applications that access data from relational databases. From a cost perspective, this is all good in that you can set up your test environment for free. On the other hand, if you use other packages such as IBM's Websphere Application Server and DB2, you'll have to make the adjustments on your own. The book is very comprehensive in what it covers, and there is an abundance of code to help you see working examples that you can use for your own purposes. Since I'm not as "up to speed" on servlet technology as I'd like to be, I'd prefer a somewhat slower style for learning. But that's not a knock on the book as much as my own personal preference. Conclusion
If you're comfortable with web applications, deployment, and servlet coding, this will be a good choice for getting started with Struts. If you're still relatively new to all this, you may want to get a book that doesn't assume quite so much to start with. Once you get familiar with Struts, this would be a good companion book for examples.
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